The Second Pics From My Smart Phone

I share 10 more pics. I take a trip down recent and childhood memory lanes. Side note: The last time I visited Berkeley was June 2009. Enjoy!

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar

The First Pics From My Smart Phone

Hello to my smart phone I purchased on July 6, 2011. These are the first 10 pictures. Enjoy!

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar

Lessons From My Office Space

An important key to be successful is a mentor. The mentor is a person who’s been there, done that. The mentor is a source of wisdom. The mentor is guidance for what is right and what is wrong. I believe if I ask 100 very successful and household name people how important a mentor is, I’m confident I receive at least a 95% yes response.

I didn’t have a mentor. One person who looked at my resume said I never worked at a position above entry level. My career has been supporting other people. I fell through the cracks. I had nobody next to me supporting my career. I had nobody telling me what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. I had nobody calling me out when I’m really screwing up professionally or personally.

I was on my own believing I was a bad ass. I believed I was the best. I didn’t need training. I learned it fast. There was nothing I couldn’t do. I read a book and I mastered it instantly. I was respected for being me, an all-star who did everything the best. I realized today I was wrong. I know some of my co-workers were angry at me for mistakes I didn’t know I caused. Nobody corrected my errors.

I received small corrections from people either not my manager or from another team. One co-worker who visited my building from another country corrected my emails. I was too polite. I should write my emails asking the question immediately. The recipients didn’t have time to read a lengthy email. Another correction came from my senior manager, a dotted line manager. She corrected me on reports saying I don’t need to include the data. Reports should have the bottom line numbers only. The readers didn’t care about the data. They wanted to see the bottom line numbers. The data could be requested separately.

Those two lessons are examples of my career lacking a mentor. I learned a lesson on posting financial numbers from one of my accounting instructor. I submitted an Excel assignment. The teacher corrected me the numbers in a financial statement are aligned right, not aligned center. I aligned center the numbers for all my reports. Nobody told me I was doing it wrong. The correct way is always align right numbers.

How Did I Fall Through The Cracks?

The manager who hired me at my first job went on vacation for two weeks. The co-worker I replace trained me for a week. The majority of the on the job training was how to handle the brokers and taking it easy. I failed to learn those lessons. Two weeks later, my manager returned and we worked together for a month. He didn’t mentor me because a few weeks later, he went to another company. He gave me a crash course on real estate statistics. Otherwise, I learned nothing about working from my office space.

The manager who hired me at my first job hired me at his second company three months later. He stayed with the company for six months because he moved to Australia. He didn’t have time to continue my training and mentor me because he was busy with a big database project. One of his assignments was to create a new database, a criteria for his hire.

A new boss was hired two months later. She did nothing with the research department. No leadership. No communication between me and my co-worker. We had a few meetings in the beginning months; thereafter, no meetings, no lunches together, and no bonding. There were discussions between my new boss and the managing partner about setting up an internship for me to mentor. Nothing happened. My boss was fired two years later.

The rest of my years at my second job went without a direct manager. My co-worker and I didn’t get along. The office manager and the managing partner did nothing to mentor me and did nothing to make amends with my co-worker. I went to my third company after working at my second company for eight years.

My third company my department was spread out in the world. My immediate boss and my immediate co-workers telecommuted most working days. I believed my experience in Crystal Reports was the reason my third company hired me. I think again and I realize working independently was another reason my third company hired me. I never saw my team at least 70% of my working days. I didn’t receive any mentoring.

My contract was terminated because of the real estate bubble. I went back to school and I earned an AA degree in Accounting. My job skills and experience are stale. I’m reviewing my Microsoft Office skills: Access, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. I’m researching learning SAS software. I should have access to online courses from Accountemps at the end of June. I learned SQL for Access, learned MySQL, and refreshed my Crystal Reports earlier this year.

Trial And Error Are My Friends

I learned two huge mistakes on my own. The first mistake I corrected in March 2006 was talk and socialize with my co-workers. Open your mouth and smile. Take a break and have a conversation. The second mistake I corrected was in 2009. I realized I actually had people supporting me in my second company. I never realized it while working. They supported my thoughts about the company not supporting my needs and not receiving help for my struggles and lack of experience. They supported my difficulties working with my co-worker. I believed I was lonely. I believed I was on my own and I had to be strong. Truthfully, I was a coward.

These lessons I learned and the lesson I’m learning today are valuable. I realized I must grow up on Sat Oct 4, 2008. The life lessons I have been learning and the life mistakes I have been correcting are useful for my next workplace. Don’t take anything for granted.

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar

My Hands

Take a look at your hands. What can they do? What do you like about them? Our hands define us as human beings. We work, play, love, touch, and feel daily. Humans has progressed and innovated because of our hands. We can do good and evil.

My hands are the least favorite part of my body. They’re small hands. I look at my hands asking myself, “What are my hands good for?” The better question is, “What are my greatest achievements with my hands?” As of this blog entry, I haven’t achieved my greatest. I want to share my strengths and weakness. My intent is to help find what my hands are good for and help find my greatest achievements. I start with my weaknesses:

*Arts, crafts, drawing, sewing. I remember in grade school my cutting, drawing, and gluing were terrible. I consistently asked my classmates for help. My finished arts were noticeably terrible when displayed in the classroom.

My mom tried to teach me sewing. I had trouble sewing on the sewing machine. It was a combination of my mom being a bad teacher and my hands not sewing straight. I was also clumsy pinning and cutting the fabric from the pattern. And I keep forgetting how to sew a button on my shirt. It’s really easy. I keep forgetting. I struggled when my mom re-taught me how sew a button.

*Handyman. I’m terrible hammering, painting, cutting wood, basic plumbing, and essentially basic handyman skills. I’m serious when I said hammering because I nail crooked or it takes me a long time to nail. And I’m serious when I said painting because there is a technique when it comes to putting pressure on the paint brush and painting corners and edges.

My dad knows basic handyman skills. His strength is woodworking. Unfortunately, my dad taught me little handyman skills when I was a child.

*Gardening. This is more attitude and less hands. I hate gardening. I remember mowing the lawn once a week in the mid 2000s. The lawn mower was easy. Using the trim tool to mow the edge of the grass was hard. Sometimes I jam and I accidentally removed some of the grass root.

Here are my strengths:

*Driving. I rate myself excellent when I drive on urban streets and freeways. I know how to parallel park and I can drive a car with a manual transmission. One weakness is judging distance when it comes to parking and hitting the curb. I wonder I could have been a professional driver—maybe a stunt driver.

*Cooking. I rate my skills as good as if I was living alone. I don’t need to eat at restaurants. I’m pretty good cooking for myself. I need to learn more skills including grilling and stir frying. I never baked before.

*Data entry and databases. There are more skills to learn including SQL and SAS. All my jobs involved data entry, databases, and reporting. I did a good job.

*Sports. I played recreational sports from grade school to college. I played football, baseball, softball, volleyball, and basketball. Football and baseball were my best. I scored many touchdowns and hit the ball pretty well.

*Dancing. Ballroom dancing is more footwork. However, my hands are good for leading my partner. The last time I danced was in March 2011. I want to go back to the dance floor.

*Household chores. Vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, laundry, etc. I do a good job keeping a house clean.

*Photographer. I’m pretty good at taking pictures as an amateur. I have my good picture shot moments taking pics of people in costumes, pics from my vacations, and random pics from my cell phones.

*Masseur. Women told me I relax them. I don’t have any training.

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar

Use Your Knees And Elbows

We human beings have knees and elbows. We use our knees to walk, run, jump, hop, skip, ski, skate, swim . . . to move around. We use our elbows to lift, reach, cook, vacuum, hammer, drive, swim, hit the person next to us dozing off . . . to assist our hands. I want everyone to do something, anything with your knees and elbows. There is no more sitting on the chair and watching television or surfing the internet. Get up and move your body using your knees and elbows.

Life is not meant to sit indoors and do mindless activities. Get active. Go outside and explore somewhere new. Hike, visit a new place, ride a bike, learn how to dance. Be active. I accept going to the gym is an outdoor activity. The body is meant to move around using our knees and elbows. Use it or lose it. Get out and do something, anything.

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar

Till Death Us Do Part Not At The Cemetery

My family and I last visited my grandparents at the cemetery on Mother’s Day. There was a new deceased person nearby my grandparents when we visited them sometimes. A few times the person was the spouse of the person who past away initially. My first thought was calculating the years between the first spouse’s death and the second spouse’s death. How did the person on the other half of the marriage spend his or her years after the first spouse died? Was their inspiration to live a new life to the fullest? Was their a lesson learned in life? Were their empty promises fulfilled in later time? Or did the person fail to live a happy life alone?

I think one of the best life happiness is a couple buried together. It tells me and the world the couple lived a happy life from the day they met to the day both died. I’m convinced couples can stay together for their entire lives, and beyond.

The Personal Side Of Me Finding Raymond Mar